Oh yeah! Back to the Guitars. That’s so much better. I can’t even tell you. It felt so good to just play for hours and then play a little more. And then play more the next day, and the next, to the point I had to take a day off because my fingers were sore.
Yes. That does mean I passed the test. For now I have my free time back to myself. I don’t know that I won’t have something else to work on after this. For now though, I’m very happy to be back to figuring out how to play this and how to play that, and all that good stuff.
I’ve been thinking about the fact that some of the guitars in my collection, haven’t really been getting the love they should. I gave some thought to why and found that there was something about a few of them that I just didn’t like as much as I had when I first got them. Either the sound wasn’t doing it for me, or it didn’t feel right, or I didn’t like the way it played. With that in mind, it seems a waste to hold on to them when someone else might find them to be exactly what they want. Maybe it’s time to see about letting go of those.
Yes, I have culled my collection. This was a big step, big decision, for me. There is one 
guitar that I had in my teen years that I sometimes wish I had not gotten rid of so when I started playing again, and acquiring guitars, adopted the attitude that I wasn’t ever getting rid of another guitar. However, as I started seriously looking at my collection, what I play, what I don’t play and why, and what I want, it didn’t make sense to hold on to that attitude. Now I’m working from the idea that if I don’t love it, I won’t keep it.
I’m more interested in having a high quality instrument, with a sound and feel I love, even if it means paying more, and owning fewer instruments. One of the things I have finally come to understand is that a really good instrument not only makes you sound better for where you are, it also makes you want to be better. It took me a while to understand that and now that’s what I’m going to focus on with my guitars.
That’s not to say that I don’t have a few guitars that I keep for sentimental reasons. I do. That’s a different sort of love for the guitar. So those stay.
I gained quite a bit of mental space when I passed that test. It’s no longer something I have to continue to worry about and spend a lot of extra time on. I also gained mental space when I traded in those guitars. It’s amazing how much space they were taking up in my brain. So now that I have that bit of mental space, I’m ready and excited to get back to learning new songs and techniques. Though I admit, I feel a little like a kid in a massive toy store, I want to run all over the place and work on this over here, and that over there, and that over there, and wait, what’s over there. There’s just so much I want to play.
I’m going to need to find a little focus pretty quick. There’s another Blues Jam coming up this weekend and possibly the week after that as well. So I don’t have a lot of time to run all over the place trying to figure out what I’m doing. I need to just get busy. And with that, I’m off to figure out a practice plan for the next few days, and play some more. Here are a few more pictures from that last jam. Now that I’m not studying I’ll work on getting the video from it posted. That will be good to work on when my fingers need a rest, just before they start to blister.